A tooth-edge-setting grammatical mistake

The fact that Shakespeare made a mistake doesn’t make it even less of one.

I’m sorry, but no matter what anybody says, “between you and I” makes no sense. I mean, you can tell what the speaker is getting at, but it still makes no sense. Here is an entire podcast on the topic.

And there’s a great 1988 Russell Baker column on it from 1988. Here is an excerpt, but really you should read the whole thing:

Grammatically, of course, Shakespeare was wrong. He should have written ”between you and me.” The grammar rule is quite plain. ”Between” is a preposition. The object of a preposition must be in the accusative (or objective) case. The accusative form of the first-person-singular pronoun is ”me.” Therefore, the correct phrase is ”between you and me.”

In ”The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare seems to have slipped accidentally. My guess is that he was writing along rapidly, maybe at the end of the day when he was tired, was wishing he’d never come up with this ”Merchant of Venice” idea, and eager to get over to the Mermaid Tavern for a beer with Jonson and Burbage.

All writers get sloppy after the first four hours at the quill, the typewriter or even the word processor. Shakespeare was surely no exception. His editor should have tracked him to the Mermaid to ask about the error./blockquote>

One problem is that everyone thinks “I” is fancier than “me”. And they think “myself” is even fancier, so they say “Myself and three others are going to lunch.”

Another is that people don’t learn other languages, which is a much better way to understand English than actually learning English grammar. If you’ve had so much as a cup of coffee in a Latin class, you know the nominative from the accusative.

A third problem? English speakers are loath to correct others, so horrible dumb mistakes go uncorrected all the time. Trust me, no French person would let a mistake pass unremarked.

Fourth problem: English is an evolving language. We all know it’s adding words furiously, not to mention idioms. A few years ago, a majority of people didn’t say “back in the day.” Now you hardly ever hear “back in the old days.” So who’s to say, we demoractic Americans think, what’s a legit evolution and what’s not?